Losing My “Cool”…

There was a time in my life that I was afraid of nothing. I sought adventure; The crazier the better. Yes, there was a time that I enjoyed people looking at me and thinking that I was crazy; that at any time, my life would end due to a wild hair that I got about something.

Sadly, I’m not sure where that girl went. I look around my life now and swear that I have got to be the most boring, dull person on the face of the planet. Whereas I would once arrive at the lake and be stripping my socks and shoes to be the first one to jump off the end of the dock, not caring if I got a splinter on the aging wood or not, I am now the woman who tells the others to go while I contently stay in the house and put the groceries away and clean up.

I’ve seen these changes over time, yet, since the boy and I began dating almost eight months ago, they’ve become more obvious, staring me in the face almost on a daily basis. But this weekend, our first at the lake of the season, I question the woman that I’ve become. I question how others now see me.

I question who I am.

I am not the same woman I was eight months ago. I don’t have the same hobbies, likes, habits, or priorities. About the only thing that has remained the same is that my name is still Heather, I am still the mother to Matthew and Samara, and I am still in love with Jesus. Other than that?

I don’t know.

Now, I won’t say that these changes are for the worse, because they aren’t. I like who I’ve become in almost every single instance… except one.

I’m not fun anymore.

I say this out loud, and of course, the boy disagrees. He claims that I’m lots of fun but when I ask how, he replies with things that I do, that really? Just take some creativity. They aren’t fun. So I bake with the kids. Big deal. Ok, so I let the kids help me pick the candles out or extinguish them. Oh yeah. They’re just chomping at the bit to do that with me every day.

The reality of it is, what I do with the kids is just so….

Well, for lack of a better word, safe.

But it goes beyond hanging with the kids. When the boy and I started dating it was October, the beginning of fall and the soon upon us winter. He told me then that he and his kids were dormant, but come the thaw, they would be go go go. I chuckled as it was quite the opposite with us. We are go go go during the school year and when summer comes around? We veg. We make no plans in the evenings or on the weekends because we don’t have to. Our school year is filled with sports and church and the like. Many weeks, we have something going on every single night. So for me, summer is just chilling.

I’ve jokingly said to the boy that if we make it through summer, we’ll be together forever. The boy is into so much, different things that I am accustomed to in my adult life, however, after the first weekend of summer, I can see the parallels with my childhood. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just as I stated before…

I’m not who I used to be.

And while the boy says he doesn’t care? I know deep down, there’s a small part of him that wishes I was a little more adventuresome. Shoot. Who are we kidding? There’s a BIG part of me that wishes I was a little more adventuresome. A HUGE part. But I don’t know how to be. I’m not sure if that is my role or if I’m just supposed to be mom. There’s nothing wrong with being mom and I like it. I enjoy taking care of the clan. I enjoy letting them go play while I put away everything and get the house ready. It pleases me to overlook the yard filled with five children ranging from 34 to 4. I like that. No, I take that back. I love that. I love the way it makes me feel. I love that I am needed. I love that I am appreciated for what I do. Because I am.

I have never been so appreciated as I am now and as a woman who’s love language is words of affirmation, I am in heaven here on earth. I am uplifted and encouraged on a daily basis. Yet, while I do all of these things, I am not expected to do all of these things.

But often times, I feel as if I don’t belong in what the rest are doing. Take today for example. The girls are on a jet ski ride around the lake, the boys splashing around waiting for their return so that they can ride. And what am I doing? I’m writing. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, as it was stated before we came up here that I was to bring my laptop and write. It’s coming back and the boy is so encouraging, however, I know that he wants me to love the water. I know that he wishes that I would be standing in the line of kids begging for another ride. But I’m not. In fact, he asked several times for two days before I finally agreed to go and I think the only reason I did is because of the way he asked. While the older ones were out riding up to the marina on their bikes, he came up and said, “I’d like to take my girls on a ride.”

And so I went and screamed like a baby the entire time.

It’s not that I wasn’t having fun because I was. But this was a high powered, fast moving vessel, and there was a four year old wedged between us. I was so afraid that she was going to go flying out from between us. It doesn’t matter that I was holding on to him as tight as I could, that my legs were pinching hers in so that she wouldn’t budge or that she had a life jacket on… no, none of those things mattered. I was deathly afraid that something was going to happen to her.

Do you see what I mean? I’ve lost my adventure. It’s just gone.

This morning he gassed up the jet ski and was helping Matthew with his bamboo rod and the younger ones asked me to take them out on a ride. They were impatient, tired of waiting. I politely said no, explaining that I didn’t know how to drive it. The six year old began explaining all the buttons and knobs to me while Matthew told me that I could take the learners key so that it wouldn’t go above 30mph. I still said no.

Who am I? I am the girl, who several times, drove my car, unlicensed and uninsured and never thought twice about it. I didn’t really know how to drive a car, yet I did it anyway but I’m unwilling, petrified even, to take a jet ski out that, heaven forbid I fell off, the thing would turn off and I have a life vest on? I don’t understand.

I don’t understand why I can’t let my hair down and not be so stuck up. Many times, the kids will be playing and I will think to myself that I need to pull the stick out of my butt and just go and do, but I can’t seem to bring myself to do it.

What happened? Where did the old Heather go?

Next weekend the boy and I are coming out sans kids and he told me that he would take me out and show me the lake without kids. Perhaps when I’m not worried about others, when I’m not concerned about a catapulting four year old, I’ll be able to sit back and enjoy myself a little bit more…

I’m hoping that as time goes on, as we continue to frequent the lake and I as see the rest of them having fun, the desire to have fun with them will be so over powering that I’ll cast my fears aside, that I’ll throw caution to the wind and join them. But for now, I’m okay sitting here on the back, screened in porch, watching, listening, observing and capturing all of these memories on film.

That’s who I’ve become; that’s who I am.

I’ll expound upon this later, but let me leave you with this…

I fell in love with my father and I am my mother.

Until next time…